Gregg Chadwick Jordaan Window 25cmx25cm oil on wood 2010
Coming up on December 3-5, 2010, I am honored to lead a workshop on creativity with writer Phil Cousineau entitled Stoking the Creative Fires: Nine Ways to Rekindle Passion and Imagination
Phil Cousineau's book "Stoking the Creative Fires" is an impassioned volume on creativity that combines myth, story and personal pilgrimages in a primer on the creative life. My painting "Fire Dream" graces the cover. We will use this book as a stepping off point for the upcoming workshop on creativity. It will be a rich journey through myth and art at Esalen. Sign up here: Reserve this workshop We hope to see you there!
The Esalen Institute is a non-profit organization founded in 1962 by Stanford alums Michael Murphy and Richard Price as an alternative educational center devoted to the exploration of what Aldous Huxley called the "human potential." This world of unrealized human capacities that lies beyond the imagination has brought to Esalen a steady influx of philosophers, psychologists, artists, and religious thinkers.
Phil Cousineau at Esalen
Allan Hunt Badiner explains the history of Esalen: "Esalen takes its name from the Native American tribe, the Esselen, that once lived there. Sitting on a former ceremonial ground, the Esalen property was the site of frequent cross-tribal peace gatherings. Esselen cosmology described Big Sur as a “weaving” center for human culture and drew representatives from tribes, near and far. Today, Esalen draws 10,000 people a year from around the world to participate in a wildly diverse menu of workshops. It brought former Russian President Boris Yeltsin to the West, popularized Rolfing and Gestalt, and nurtured books like The Tao of Physics and The Dancing Wu Li Masters. Esalen created a context for understanding psychedelics, established the healing power of massage, and championed wisdom of the body. Visitors often mention that the land itself and spectacular coastline setting feels almost sacred." Allan's words are not surprising, given the retreat’s lineage of powerful teachers such as Abraham Maslow, Joseph Campbell, Alan Watts, Fritz Perls, Allen Ginsberg, Ida Rolf, Joan Baez, Boris Yeltsin, Philip Glass, Gregory Bateson, Buckminster Fuller and countless others who have visited and taught at Esalen in an effort to discuss, debate and develop revolutionary ideas, transformative practices, and innovative art forms.
Last night the final episode of Lost was broadcast on ABC. After a six year run the series ends almost as it began with a close up of Jack's face. Six years ago, Jack opened an eye to the strange new world of the island. Last night his eye closed to the mystery.
Satisfyingly, the mystery remains for us. The intersection of quantum physics and myth that seemed to engender the island remains tantalizingly out of reach. Jack's father may have walked offscreen into a heavenly light in the slide sideways/ slide metaphysical finale but on the island the tangible wreckage of a plane remains in the final shot before the credits roll.
At the start of this season, Chad W Post on the WSJ's Speakeasy wrote,"So if Lost wraps up with a definitive conclusion, with a series of resolutions and answers to all the mysteries, I’ll be disappointed. Great works of art don’t work that way. Great works of art are open to interpretation. If I already know the solution, why revisit the puzzle?"
Yesterday, in Paris the exhibition Turner and the Masters closed as well. I had the opportunity to visit the Grand Palais a few weeks ago and reveled in the light in Turner's works. In JMW Turner's paintings, light and shade are not abstract concepts nor a means to an end. Light and Shadow for Turner were in a sense palpable beings or characters.
As this season's episodes of Lost built to a conclusion, the dichotomy of light and shadow gained screen time. At times this duality was schematically rendered as black and white or as a glowing cavern and a shifting being of smoke. In a mythic sense were Jacob and the Man in Black merely personifications of day and night? Or was there a darker battle between Good and Evil that threatened all existence?
Turner would have had fun with the themes and imagery in Lost. I can only imagine how much richer and powerful Turner's depiction of the glowing cavern would have been. In the hands of a master like Turner a simple medium of pigment and oil can create a world that far surpasses the technological feats of digital graphics.
Turner learned much from the artists who preceded him. From Claude Lorrain, Aelbert Cuyp, Rembrandt and others Turner learned "to blend ... in all the golden colour of ambient vapour." It is the mystery within this blending of light and shadow that draws us back into Turner's paintings over and over again.
Chad W. Post hoped that "the final moments of Lost echo the ambiguously abrupt ending of The Crying of Lot 49, which leaves the reader tantalizingly close to resolution but forces them to go back through the book time and again, revisiting key brilliant passages in hopes of figuring it all out. I want my Lost incomplete. I want it to leave me with a desire to keep re-watching and debating. I want it to remain the great work of art it has become over the past five seasons."
Some Other Thoughts on the Lost Finale:
Chad W. Post writes "In terms of the overall narrative arc, I thought this was pretty brilliant and satisfying. The show has always been more about the characters than the mysteries. And the more time that passes (hello 1:30am!), the happier I am with how Lost resolved itself."
Tyler Cowen writes on Marginal Revolution,"Overall I thought it was the best final episode of a series I have seen, with close competition from The Sopranos."
James Poniewozik at TIME Magazine writes: "Lost, was not perfect, because nothing is. I still believe that Jacob and the Man in Black were never characterized as richly as other characters, like Ben, which rendered Locke in the end too much of a generic baddie. And the final images--with the heavenly light shining though the doorway of the chapel, as Christian walked into it a la Close Encounters--were a bit overly touched by an angel. But the finale, as good TV finales do, captured what the show's essence. Lost is a story about community, connections and interdependence. You live together, it told us, or you die alone. And when you live together--when you share of yourself and make meaning with others--you never die alone, even when you die bleeding out on the floor of a bamboo forest."
Sir John Gilbert wrote after watching Turner paint on Varnishing Day:
"He had been the Royal Academy all the morning, and seemed likely, judging by the state of the picture, to remain for the rest of the day. He was absorbed in his work, did not look about him, but kept on scumbling a lot of white into his picture -nearly all over it. The subject was a Claude-like composition, a bay or harbour-classic buildings on the banks of either side and in the centre the sun. The picture was a mass of red and. yellow in all varieties. Every object was in this fiery state. He had a large palette, nothing on it but a huge lump of flake white; he had two or three biggish hog tools to work with, and with these he was driving the white into all the hollows, and every part of the surface. . . . The picture gradually became wonderfully effective, just the effect of brilliant sunshine absorbing everything and throwing a misty haze over every object. Standing sideway of the canvas, I saw that the sun was a lump of white standing out like the boss of a shield."
Iran 2010 Part Three of The "Green Movement Digital Paintings" - Digital Paintings, Video & Music by Soheil Tavakoli
Soheil Tavakoli was born on April 17th, 1968 in Tehran, Iran. Soheil became an artist and architect in Iran until he left for the United States in 2004. Tavakoli explains that "he left Iran for the United States in search of a more dynamic and understanding society."
"In America, magnificence is a common treasure.... We own together the most magnificent places on the continent." Carl Pope - The Sierra Club
In 1872 the United States Government created the first National Park on the globe: Yellowstone National Park. Ken Burns has created a new series of documentary films, The National Parks - America's Best Idea , that celebrates this landmark achievement.
Thomas Moran Yellowstone watercolor on paper from Ken Burns' The National Parks - America's Best Idea
The first installment in the series, The Scripture of Nature, tells the history of Yellowstone and the inspiration for a National Parks system that sprung out of the collection of "artists, writers, entrepreneurs, and tourists" that found beauty and worth in the stunning natural world of Yosemite in California and Yellowstone in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.
Albert Bierstadt Yosemite Valley oil on canvas from Ken Burns' The National Parks - America's Best Idea On June 30, 1864 President Abraham Lincoln signed a law to preserve Yosemite.
John Muir was inspired by the majesty of the American landscape and became the voice for the preservation of our spectacular wilderness. Ken Burns' series on the National Parks is ever so timely as cynicism seems to be our new national voice. I highly recommend this series of documentaries and am convinced that those who pay attention to Burns' films will come away changed and inspired.
American Indian at Yosemite from Ken Burns' The National Parks - America's Best Idea Ken Burns points out that in the American Indian language of the region, Yosemite means "people who should be feared, they are killers."
Ken Burns is an American treasure. My son and I were fortunate to meet him and thank him for the amazing work he has done to bring history to the forefront of public consciousness. We are lucky to have him and his art.
Charlie Chaplin's Final Speech in the "Great Dictator" subtitled in Farsi
From the New York Times lede blog: Watching Charlie Chaplin in Tehran By ROBERT MACKEY In a brief update on Friday, the Twitter feed IranRiggedElect says that the video embedded below, of Charlie Chaplin’s final speech in the 1940 film “The Great Dictator” with Farsi subtitles, is popular on Iranian social networks at the moment. In this scene, Chaplin’s character addresses a fascist rally, while impersonating an Adolf Hitler-like leader, and denounces militarism and dictatorship:
Amid signs that Iran’s military may be increasing its power, it is not hard to imagine why supporters of Iran’s opposition might be heartened by Chaplin's speech calling on soldiers to “fight for liberty.”
A sidenote, Portrait of Charlie Chaplin by the French artist Fernand Léger
"Pompeii, especially, with its grand murals and flourishing gardens haunted by the dark shadow of Vesuvius, has always suggested uncomfortable parallels with our contemporary world, especially here in Southern California, where the sunlit life also turns out to have dark shadows in which failure and death lurk at the edge of consciousness. Now, in these times, we have even closer parallels with those ancient, beautiful, affluent people living the good life on the verge of annihilation." —Eleanor Antin on Classical Frieze
Eleanor Antin The Artist's Studio from "The Last Days of Pompeii," 2001 (detail) chromogenic print 46 5/6 x 58 5/8 inches
Eleanor Antin The Tree from "The Last Days of Pompei," 2001 chromogenic print 60 x 48 inches
Eleanor Antin's film and photo work, Classical Frieze, re-imagines Pompeii and the classical Roman world as if seen through the eyes of a contemporary filmmaker paying homage to the sword and sandal film epics of the 1950's which are then viewed through a scrim of French neoclassical painting from the 1800's. Eleanor Antin's work was chosen to illuminate a contemporary viewpoint or perhaps fantasy of the Roman world and is featured alongside LACMA'S current exhibition Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture around the Bay of Naples.
Art21 on PBS describes Eleanor as "a cultural chameleon, masquerading in theatrical or stage roles to expose her many selves." Eleanor has a long and influential record as a visual and performance artist, as well as a filmmaker and photographer. Eleanor Antin "delves into history—whether of ancient Rome, the Crimean War, the salons of nineteenth-century Europe, or her own Jewish heritage and Yiddish culture—as a way to explore the present. "
I find Eleanor's Classical Frieze to be lightly provocative and very humorous. At the same time, the work which is ravishing in its color reminds me of the rich chroma in David Lynch's Blue Velvet. In that film and Antin's work, as Eleanor suggests," the sunlit life also turns out to have dark shadows in which failure and death lurk at the edge of consciousness" Antin sees that "Pompeii, especially, with its grand murals and flourishing gardens haunted by the dark shadow of Vesuvius, has always suggested uncomfortable parallels with our contemporary world, especially here in Southern California, ... Now, in these times, we have even closer parallels with those ancient, beautiful, affluent people living the good life on the verge of annihilation."
"Pompeii and the Roman Villa illustrates how the Trojan War and the death and wandering of the great Greek heroes were the moral and aesthetic tropes of Roman culture. Whereas for us, the romance of the Roman Empire, with its deliciously decadent affluence and military power, lies deep in modern Western consciousness. The great 19th-century colonial powers that preceded us saw themselves as the new Rome, bringing civilization to primitive peoples, not unlike the way we see ourselves today. At the same time, we are uneasy and haunted by the great empire that owned but then lost the world."
Art:21 | Eleanor Antin | Inventing Histories
May 14, 2009–October 4, 2009 | LACMA - Art of the Americas Building
The Egyptian god Sobek seems to be the inspiration for the giant statue on LOST. I was leaning towards Anubis but the crocodilian snout gives it away. (Anubis was probably a bit too close to Stargate anyway.) Gary Jones' masterful photo of the Temple of Haroeris and Sobek in Egypt shows Sobek in detail. The light in Jones' photo is stunning - mysterious and beckoning.
"Having the form of a crocodile, the Egyptians believed that he also had the nature of a crocodile. He could be the strong, powerful symbol of the pharaoh, showing the ruler's might. He could use this force to protect the justified dead in their after life, and be the protector and rescuer of the other gods... yet he could also use that power to savage his enemies and the sinful deceased. He could bestow sight and senses to the dead, he could bring water and fertility to the land."
"What lies in the shadow of the statue?" Richard's answer in Latin is:
"Ille qui nos omnes servabit," ("He who will protect/save us all.")
Just in time for the release tomorrow of the film Angels and Demons, we have Richard on LOST answering questions in Latin and calling himself Ricardo. Latin of course brings to mind the Catholic church and the history of Rome. Could Richard be a priest? Is he also known as Father Ricardo?
The Los Angeles Times has a powerful article on the power of art to speak of troubled streets and difficult choices. Budding filmmaker Marquis Calhoun found his passion for film at Camp David, the youth detention center not the presidential compound,during a filmmaking class taught by the award winning filmmaker Alex Muñoz.
John L. Mitchell, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer writes,"Every year for the last five years, the class of teenagers has produced a number of dramatic scripts and, eventually, short films about the precarious twists and turns of a harsh life on the streets."
"But this year, one student's story was different: Marquise Calhoun's screenplay focused on death -- his own."
Watch the film. Read the article. And visit the website for Films by Youth Inside. Powerful stuff.
